


The Provenance of Memory

by margothedestroyer



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 12:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18151961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margothedestroyer/pseuds/margothedestroyer
Summary: Despite the occasional flicker of life she feels from her short time in Velaris, Feyre cannot let go of the events she does and doesn't remember from Under the Mountain. After yet another argument with Rhysand, the two of them finally confront the truth about the weeks she spent drugged.





	The Provenance of Memory

It was late at night. The stars were wheeling over Velaris, and normally at this hour I would be asleep while the others were out dancing or already retired at the House of Wind. But tonight, though Mor, Cassian, and Azriel were indeed gone from the townhouse, I was still being kept awake against my will by the arrogant male sitting before me. 

“Again,” Rhysand demanded. He’d been moody all day; something Azriel had reported to him at first light had clearly darkened his disposition. And I was being forced to reap the “rewards” of his unacknowledged frustration. Now, in the middle of the night, because he had been unable to attend to our training during the day. Never mind that I had still spent hours at the mercy of Cassian in the ring. It seemed Rhysand intended to add a full night’s work to today’s. An intention I was not about to let him follow through on. Now that my sleeping had become more regular, I found myself longing for my bed by this time of the night. Being up this late, performing Rhys’ repetitive tasks like a pet doing tricks ... it made my skin feel tight and my eyes burn and sparked a low-burning resentment in my chest. 

“No,” I retorted, crossing my arms. “I am going to sleep. You can waste you time trying to make me useful tomorrow.” 

His eyes flashed. The simmering tension in him seemed to heighten, the frustration edging toward anger now.

“Is that what you think we’re doing here? Wasting our time? You think I’m foolishly wiling down the days until Hybern lands on our shores? Because I enjoy your sparkling personality so much?”

I almost stopped, taken aback a bit, perhaps, because even with his sullen mood I hadn’t expected him to respond any more aggressively than our normal teasing. Azriel’s news must have been ill indeed for Rhys to be reacting like this. I didn’t let myself consider that maybe it was what I had said that had provoked so strong a reaction. I had spent enough time considering the strength of _my_ reactions to _him._ To try to parse his towards me ... I would never be able to get through a conversation with him again, I’d be so busy detangling it all. 

Instead of going down that road, I let the exhausted anger in me spread like a rash. I buzzed with it, a hive struck with a rock. “I’m not the one keeping you from your bed. Trying to force you to stay around just because I can. Because I’m in a bad mood and all my friends went off without me so they didn’t have to deal with it.”

He stared at me silently, endless night roiling behind his eyes. My words had again escalated this. I wondered at who I had become, I who once went so far afield to try to soothe a male’s anger. Now, here I was, brazenly provoking the ire of a much more powerful male. Because ... because I too had an anger in me that I could not speak of truly, so instead I lashed out, directionless. Knowing that he and I were doing the same thing only served to stoke the fire now fully catching within me.

“I am not,” he said, slowly and deliberately and as clear and cutting as fractured glass, “forcing you, in any way, to do anything.” Still nothing but that deep, churning darkness in his eyes. “You are, _as always,_ free to do what you wish, Feyre.”

I knew he was right. Knew I was staying up with him of my own choice. But I wasn’t ready to face why I might voluntarily be indulging him, why I had felt his absence today in a way I didn’t want to acknowledge. And as had so frequently been the case lately, my anger was there for me to turn to when I turned from whatever else was rising within me. It was flamed by my exhaustion, the ever-present pressure of Hybern, his own dark mood ... but it was born in my cowardice, and my shame at that just stoked it further.

“And what about what you did to me Under the Mountain? Was I free to do as I wished when you kept me as your pet? You had me out of my mind on faerie wine. I woke up every morning not knowing what the hell you’d used me for the --”

He went utterly still at my words, and the sorrow that yawned wide in his eyes before darkness shuttered them stopped me from completing my sentence. 

“Not knowing what I used you for? Not knowing? You think I covered you in that paint so I would know if someone else had touched you? You think I’d need a trick like that to know if someone so much as brushed against you?”

His voice caught, and he paused long enough for that colder mask to fall into place. He removed his hand from where it had clenched on his chest and flicked his fingers in what felt like dismissal.

“I did it,” he said darkly, “so you would know that I hadn’t done _that_ to you. So you would know that I _wouldn’t_ do that to you.” His eyes were hard, covering the pain I knew he was feeling. I was all but accusing him of victimizing me the same way he’d been victimized for half a century. “I guess I was unsuccessful.” 

He went to turn away and I grabbed his arm so quickly, so devoid of conscious intention, that I was almost surprised to see the contrast of my pale skin on the black of his clothing. “Rhys.” He stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think --” no, that wasn’t entirely truthful, “I _don’t_ think you would ...” I couldn’t make myself voice the words. “That you would do that to me. To anybody. But,” and I forced myself to look up and meet his eyes, to allow him to see all the tangled emotions twisting like thorned creepers within me, “you deprived me of my memories without giving me a choice in the matter. And I don’t think you were wrong to do so ... to think me too weak ...”

“Feyre.” He slowly, so slowly, raised his hand up to cup my cheek. I stilled, completely and suddenly aware of every shift of my body, of every breath of air pushing me closer or further from that hand. “You have _never_ been weak. You were a human. The oak that stands against storm after storm for decades but succumbs to the forest fire is not weak. The mother jungle cat that faces down any enemy but starves when her forest is razed is not weak for not being able to make the trees grow. We are all differently equipped. It is never a weakness to be who one is, no matter how it may end. You were already a human holding your own against the worst the High Fae can bring to bear.” He paused, eyes shifting back and forth as if he were seeing it all again. I’d slipped back in time frequently enough to understand what he must be reliving. “I sought to take that portion of the burden that I was better equipped to survive so you had a chance to save us all. Asking anything more of you, who had already given so much ... you were strong enough to do what none of us could. ”

I still hadn’t moved. Carefully, I brought my hand up to brush against his own on my cheek. I didn’t know if I needed the touch to reassure myself as his words stoked those ever-lurking memories or if I did it to soften the blow as I said, “I think -- I think I still need to see. I need to know the truth of what we’re facing. And it’s more than that. I was there. Just because I don’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen ... her victims deserve to have someone bear witness to what happened to them. Someone who cares.”

He agreed, I think for the simple fact that he felt the same way. As much as he didn’t want me to carry this weight, he thought it must be carried nonetheless. He raised his other hand to my face, cupping it between his warm, broad palms. 

“I can’t give you back your memories of those nights. The wine blacked you out truly. But I can show you from my eyes.” I made to pull back, realizing what that meant, remembering how it’d felt to _be_ him those times, with his memories of Ianthe and the Attor, but his long fingers held me tight. “It’s okay,” he said softly. I felt his shield dropping like a shockwave pulsing through me, and I had barely reached tentatively for the bond when --

_I was Under the Mountain. Feyre’s back took up most of my view. We were seated in the shadows of the throne room, her pliant, drugged body perched on my knee. I’d picked the edge of the room in an attempt to keep me -- both of us -- mostly out of sight and hopefully off of anybody’s mind. It’s not like I had any trouble seeing in the darkness._

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_Fear and pain scent filled the air. A young female Illyrian was being restrained by her wings by two hulking Illyrian males. The rage that the sight stirred in me was obliterating, all-consuming. It sounded like fire was roaring in my ears. I stared impassively while behind my eyes I saw my own mother’s face on the female’s captive form. My own face was schooled, as always, into the cruelly bored smirk I wore in this court. The female struggled but did not plead, while the larger of the males explained to Amarantha her “crime” against his traitor clan. She had tried to escape her pinioning by scheming her way to the court Under the Mountain, hoping to avoid any Illyrian noticing her maturation into adulthood. Perhaps she had assumed that, as a female, Amarantha would show some sort of compassion for her position._

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_She would have been better throwing herself off a cliff with her wings tied closed._

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_I couldn’t not watch, couldn’t risk stirring Amarantha’s memory of when her troops had held me in such a similar position. I couldn’t give her a craving for reliving our past. The thought of her remembering my wings, what she would do, what she was allowing to be done to the female --_

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_But I could still stop Feyre from having to witness the worst of it. Whenever the captors reached out with a burning brand, I commanded her to face me and feed me pieces of fruit from our table. When the female’s screams began to burst past her clenched teeth, I commanded Feyre to lean closer so I could whisper nothings in her ear. With the wine, she wouldn’t remember much of what she did see, but I still couldn’t stop myself. Maybe I just selfishly couldn’t let her first encounter with my people be this example of how they treated their females. Or maybe I hoped to limit what flashes did make it through the drugged amnesia. All I knew for certain was it felt like I was saving a small part of myself by turning her from the spectacle._

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_But the rest of me ... that was surely damned as my eyes remained glued to the winged trio. My mother’s voice overlaid the screams._

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_Even as the screams began to weaken._

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_Still I watched._

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_Still I smiled._

I poured back into my body like a river flooding. Too much. I could never hope to hold it all.

His eyes roved over my face, trying to read how the memory had impacted me. Respecting my privacy by not reaching toward the bond himself, but still intensely attempting to scry whatever he saw in the depths of my eyes. “Is that what you were looking for?”

It wasn’t enough. Something was still missing, but I couldn’t put a finger on what I truly wanted to know. Wanted to see. I already saw enough of Amarantha’s tortures in the nightmares that still plagued my sleep. I knew what she’d done. What _could_ I see that would quiet this need that had spread its tendrils through me, under my skin like choking vines?

Rhys seemed to understand before I did as he shook his head. “No,” he murmured sadly. “I suppose it isn’t. What you just saw happened almost nightly. You’ve shoved your dreams down the bond enough for me to know you already see her victims in them. They might be faceless to you, but you already have them marked in your soul.” He dropped his hands from my face. My cheeks suddenly felt cold. “I may be even worse than Tamlin.” My heart stopped at those words, a visceral rejection already on my lips as he continued, “He denied you your choices to protect you. And here I am, cherry picking memories that rightfully belong to you, trying to protect myself. You don’t want to see what she did. You want to see what _I_ did.”

His voice broke at the end. I closed what little distance remained between us so I could reach down and grasp his hands. I brought them to my face, pressed them gently to where they had rested moments earlier, and held them there. “I want to see what _we_ did.” Each night we’d spent there after my bargain had been the result of me failing to answer Amarantha’s riddle. Failing to heed Alis’ advice about bargaining. What Rhys did to get us through those nights ... I carried some of the responsibility too. If only because asking him to live with it alone seemed a level of cold-hearted I hadn’t felt even when I’d let that arrow fly for Andras’ eye. Not able to find the words, I opened a gap in my adamant wall and sent all I was feeling down the bond.

The sorrow in his eyes didn’t lessen, but it did temper with something like determination as he nodded and gently gripped my face again. I took a deep breath and once more traveled down the bond to his mind.

_To Under the Mountain. Not in the shadows this time, but siting at the foot of Amarantha’s dais. I was listening to Amarantha speak. Feyre’s body wasn’t in my -- Rhys’ -- lap this time, instead I could see it perched on the arm of the chair I was sitting in._

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_“After all these years, still you struggle. Still you throw your pitiful lives at my feet as if volunteering for death. Is my court not to your liking? Is the rubble of your land really so much more desirable than what your own precious Mountain can provide?”_

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_There was a High Fae youth splayed on the ground in front of her. His limbs were stretched and twisted by some dark power, blood and saliva pouring out of the limp corners of his mouth down his clearly dislocated jaw. Utterly broken_ \-- like Clare would be. Like I myself would be. Somewhere outside the memory, the bond itself shuddered -- _I was wearing the mask I had worn all fifty years, as bonded to my face as those of the Spring Court. Bored. Occasionally vaguely amused by the activity in front of me. I didn’t allow myself to really see it, instead focusing on the pale expanse of Feyre’s shoulder. The steady, deep rhythm of her drugged breathing. Peacefully ignorant of the horror in front of her as she mindlessly polished an ornate goblet under my command. Yet another attempt of mine to keep her attention elsewhere. Not adding another nightmare to run through her mind at her every waking breath. The little mercy I could do her while pretending it was a cruelty._

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_“Rhysand.”_

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_I went stiff for the smallest of moments, less than the time fae light took to flicker, then indulgently languid. I raised my drink, shifting in front of Feyre as I did so. “Yes, my Queen?”_

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_I had made a mistake in hesitating. As brief as it was, Amarantha marked it as she marked all of my movements, in constant search of a new pressure point to have the Attor push. Her eyes lingered on Feyre. Weighing. Watching._

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_“Tear his conspirators out of him. Do as much damage as you’d like while doing so.”_

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_A test. To make sure, when given the choice, I would still degrade myself to please her. As if the constant test of breathing the same air as her wasn’t enough. As if watching Feyre’s trials, her breaking herself over and over, wasn’t enough. Another test of the mask. At what point did it just become my true face?_

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_I pushed the thought from my mind. I had saved Velaris. And, if what I was beginning to suspect was true, maybe ... maybe Feyre could save me. Save all of my people. If I could keep her alive long enough to achieve her victory. If I could give her the best chance at winning her trials. I had survived for five hundred years. Surely I could help her survive another few weeks._

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_“With pleasure,” I purred, forcing myself to use the tone I used as her whore, flowing to my feet with a sinuous grace meant to draw her eye. It didn’t. Instead, she remained focused on Feyre, a slight smile on her mouth. Considering. Planning. My mind raced for a solution. I couldn’t let that mistaken hesitation doom us this close to salvation. I needed to make her doubt what she’d seen. I needed to let the mask grow deeper, take more of me._

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_I stood behind Feyre and wrapped my broad palm around the lower part of her neck, letting the rest of my hand splay across the top of her chest. Amarantha’s eyes went to me, and mine went directly to Tamlin. I smiled. Let the little part of me that truly did feel pleasure at his pain through to shine in my gaze. And Amarantha finally broke her appraisal of Feyre in favor of looking adoringly at Tamlin’s taut form._

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_“See how she lets him touch her, Tamlin? See how weak the human heart is? How easily swayed by wine and touch?”_

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_In concert with her words, I tightened my grip. Not enough to hurt, not with the wine dulling her senses, but enough so the court’s sharp eyes could see my fingers digging into Feyre’s skin as I used my hand to pull her to her feet._

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_“Feyre, darling,” I murmured, pulling her body back against me, hand still on her neck. Every place where our bodies touched burned. Not in desire, but in a scalding sense of fundamental wrongness at the circumstances of the touch. “Would you like to help entertain your betters this evening?” Amarantha’s eyes flashed in approval. A base, pedestrian reaction to an obvious appeal to her ego, but Feyre’s victory had stoked a raging anger in her. A representation of all that she loathed about human weakness had been strong enough to overcome her brutal trials._

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_I would do everything within my crippled power to see Feyre through all three. If I kept her at my side, Amarantha wouldn’t be able to turn her attention to her if she got bored by her hellish diversions. Even if it meant forcing her to play a role in this horror show._

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_“Come,” I commanded, sending a gentle nudge into her shieldless mind to do as I said as I released her and stalked to the youth’s contorted form on the stone. I forced my steps to be light, and it felt like the heaviness that sought to weigh down my feet instead came to lodge in my chest. How heavy could that weight grow before it crushed all of me beneath it? Feyre followed like a fawn stumbling after its mother, vacant expression on her face. To save her, and maybe save us all ... another sacrifice of my soul at my own hands. All I could hope or pray for was Feyre. When I thought her name, I swear I could feel it beat alongside my heart, strengthening it against the burden that continuously smothered it._

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_I tried not to focus on what I did to the boy. He was already so broken that, in truth, there was little I could do. But I still made a show of it. I did what I could to take away his physical pain, but Amarantha wanted him utterly destroyed before her, so I did not touch his mental or emotional anguish. The scent of his despair and fear was so thick in the air I felt like I could feel it clogging my throat, fancied I could see motes of it floating around us all as his screams reverberated through the crypt-like throne room. By the time that it was over, nobody he loved would have recognized him. Blood had splattered my hands and my clothing._

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_“Oh Rhysand,” Amarantha crooned, delighted by my unexpected savagery. “You got your hands dirty. Were your mind tricks not giving you the ... satisfaction you desired?” Her eyes were heavy with desire. My entire body felt like lead. Like I could fall to my knees and no strength would be enough to raise me again. But my show wasn’t over. I couldn’t do this every night, couldn’t constantly throw myself in front of Feyre to protect her. I needed Amarantha to see her as no more than a decoration. Nothing more than a tool for me to get to Tamlin. I did not have enough of my power left to me to cloak her in true shadow, so I had to make her invisible to the court another way._

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_“Feyre darling,” I drawled, my eyes meeting Amarantha’s. I let her see what she wanted to see in the darkness that swirled inside of me. Let her see that my attention was on her alone, not the human at my side. “Why don’t you help me wash up?” I sent a gentle command into her mind to accompany my words, and finally broke Amarantha’s gaze to look at Tamlin instead. Let my face assume the expression Amarantha wore when she looked at me. The vagueness of my words, accompanied by my glance, made his body so tense I thought he would topple over right then and there. I wished I could feel satisfaction at that._

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_Instead, I looked back at Amarantha while Feyre fetched the wide bowl of sparkling faerie wine from a nearby table. For once I was grateful to be looking at my enemy. It meant I didn’t have to look at Feyre as I bent her to my will. I forced her to stand as still as a statue, bowl outstretched in her hands._

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_I washed the blood off into the effervescent liquid._

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_I was hollow inside._

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_I removed my hands from the bowl and flicked them over the youth’s corpse dismissively, spraying the mix of blood and wine over him._

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_All there was now was a yawning emptiness._

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_I approached Feyre._

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_Inside of me was a devouring darkness that would crush everything I had once been until it was no more than a figment._

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_I reached out._

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_Did I even remember what the air above Velaris felt like over my wings?_

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_I smeared the rest of the wetness on my hands over her gossamer-thin gown. She stood there vacantly as I degraded her too._

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_I turned from her and approached Amarantha’s throne. Tamlin was vibrating in rage. I bowed in a mocking imitation of a Dawn Court courtier, and held out my hand, even as I sent a trickle of my power to Nuala and Cerridwen to get Feyre back to her cell._

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_“My Queen. Would you like to retire?”_

My face was wet. My hands were dry. No. My face was dry and my hands were wet with blood and wine. No. My hands were on Rhys’ and tears were running down my cheeks. 

I was in my own body.

And the expression on Rhys’ face ...

I had seen it staring at me out of the mirror every time Alis had sat me down to ready me for my daily duty as Tamlin’s pet. And if I could go back to that last day Under the Mountain, faerie blood thick on my hands ... I knew I would have seen it on my face then too. 

Could you continue to live when your soul had been partially severed from you? Could you truly survive when the current that ran through you was diverted and polluted and dried up? Could you regrow that connection, recapture your shade? Or would bits and pieces of you continue to seep from the wound until you withered away, like I had done for all those months?

I didn’t know. From how Rhys had been coaxing me back to life, I’d assumed he did. But maybe ... maybe he had been stumbling through this time as much as I had. Maybe ... he wished that _he_ could shout down the bond, and maybe _I_ would come and take him out of his waking nightmare. 

Neither one of us had said anything. What could you say after all that had happened? What could _I_ say after feeling the undercurrent of his every thought about me? The depths that I could feel tumbling beneath every brush of my name through his mind?

I looked him deep into those swirling violet eyes and willed my own to reflect all that was antithetical to what I had seen in Amarantha’s. 

“I may not have been able to save myself ... my soul,” I choked, then hurried on before he could contradict me, “but your people _are_ saved, Rhysand. And I will save you too. Like you --” and here I couldn’t meet his gaze while I said what I needed to say. Not yet. I still didn’t entirely know what I meant by how I felt. “Like you saved me. I will do it with all of the power I was born with. With the power that I was given. And with the power that I stole. I will help you make your better world. Let us be the last who need to be saved from what they’ve had to do for their people.”

His hands tightened on mine, now joined between our bodies. The bond pulsed with a maelstrom of emotion. Hope. Pain. Approval. Loss. Something so deep and wide I was afraid to give it a name. And the beating of that bond ... it felt like maybe, just maybe, I could feel my soul begin to stir in time to it.


End file.
